Agricultural News

Tim Schiefelbein Invests in His Customers to Add Value Not Only to Them but Back to his Ranch Too

Tue, 04 Apr 2017 16:36:01 CDT

Over the past few decades, one Minnesota Angus family has changed the way their customers view their calf crop.

“They went from just selling calves at the barn and forgetting about it to the day they can’t wait when they’re harvested. In fact most of my calls come right before they know their cattle are going to harvest to say, ‘How did they do? How did they do?’ said Minnesota Angus breeder Tim Schiefelbein. They want to find out. They want to know what they are producing. They are out in Timbuktu area not ever knowing and now they have a chance to and they really like that and then we work together how to make things better.”

The “you buy, we bid” customer buy-back program has a two-fold goal:

“And by us bidding on those calves and buying quite a few of them where we’ll buy about 25,000 a year, it helps increase their value where they can see it right in front of them where they can see it,” Schiefelbein said. “By buying that bull, they got more money for their calves and it’s real easy for them to see. And then on top of that, we track the cattle trough, we capture the data and then we know how to even make the cattle better.”

The breeder admits it’s a risk, but one his family is willing to take.

“You know that you’re going to get a report card back on those cattle and it better be good,” Schiefelbein said. “Because either we are buying them and it affects us directly, or another feedlot that I work with is buying them and they are going to know how well they do and if they do good they are going to go back and buy them - and if they don’t do well it makes your own bottom line go down, or their bottom line, so we put a lot of emphasis on creating cattle better.”

They watch the market and then employ technology and tools to be sure they’re producing the genetics it wants.

“We’ve had to implement the genomic testing to make your cattle better,” Schiefelbein concluded. “We’ve had to implement tons of embryo transfer work by cutting out the bottom quarter of the herd and replacing it with the top four or five cows and replacing them and all of that goes into making your cattle better so it all works.”

The program takes extra work and capital, but the end rewards are worth it, Schiefelbein says.

To watch a video clip featuring Minnesota Angus breeder Tim Schiefelbein talks about how they add value to their customers’ calves by investing in thousands of them, click or tap the PLAYBOX below.